San Antonio’s gay Pride celebration is Saturday

1of2Adriana Martinez cheers for a float during the Pride Parade in San Antonio on Saturday, July 4, 2015.Photo: Lisa Krantz, Staff / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

2of2The Silver Dollar float cruises by during the Pride Parade in 2013. This year’s parade kicks off at 9 p.m. Saturday at Dewey Place and North Main Avenue, in front of the Silver Dollar Saloon.Photo: San Antonio Express-News / File photo

Celebrate freedom and equality this July 4th weekend at San Antonio’s 13th gay Pride Festival and Pride Parade on Saturday.

The festival runs from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday in Crockett Park, 1300 N. Main Ave., followed by a Rainbow Dash 1-mile fun run and walk at 8 p.m. and then the Krystal Kelly High-Heel Race at 8:45 p.m.

The parade kicks off at 9 p.m. at Dewey Place and North Main Avenue, in front of the Silver Dollar Saloon, and ends at Lexington and Euclid.

Admission to the festival is $10, but the parade is free.

The parade grand marshals are state District Judge Ron Rangel, who performed a mass wedding at last year’s Pride Festival, and Bexar County Court-at-Law Judge Eugenia “Genie” Wright, who performed some of the first same-sex marriage ceremonies in the county after last year’s Supreme Court decision legalizing the unions. Spirit marshal is John Nunez.

James Poindexter, director of Pride “Bigger Than Texas” and secretary of the Pride San Antonio Inc. board of directors, hopes attendees will “be able to see the diversity of the community and the diversity of the businesses that we have.”

Many people think the event isn’t family friendly, but it is, he said, featuring a variety of vendors at the festival.

The entire event is called Pride “Bigger Than Texas.” This year’s theme is “Peace. Love. Pride.”

That theme may be especially appropriate after the June 12 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a popular gay dance club and bar. It has been called the worst mass shooting in American history, with 49 people killed and 53 people wounded, many of them gay.

Many expect this year’s Pride to be bigger than ever because of the Orlando shooting and how that so affected the gay community, Poindexter said.

“I think the tragedy in Orlando has really woken up a sleeping bear,” he said. “People are starting to realize now, you know what, this discrimination is really wrong and out of control.”

Vianna Davila was born and raised in San Antonio. She graduated from Rice University with a bachelor's degree in English in 2002. That year, she was hired at the San Antonio Express-News as a reporter for what was then the paper's community news section, Neighbors. In 2005, she joined the Express-News metro reporting staff, covering crime for the next two and a half years. Vianna left the paper in 2007 to pursue her master's in journalism-documentary at the University of California at Berkeley. Her thesis film, "In His Blood," won the prize for best short documentary at the San Antonio Film Festival in 2009. Shortly after graduation from Berkeley, she returned to the Express-News to cover general assignments, the city's Spanish colonial missions and to produce videos for the paper's website. She covered transportation from 2011 to 2015, for which she was named Express-News Reporter of the Year in 2013. Vianna led the Express-News’ in-depth look at San Antonio’s rapid growth, an 18-month investigation that resulted in the six-part "The Next Million" story project in the summer of 2016. She is now covering city government, with a continued focus on growth and development. Vianna is also an adjunct journalism instructor at Texas State University in San Marcos.